Cluster of excellence builds mobile laboratory

Photo: UHH/Esfandiari Delivery of the cluster's mobile lab - To study valuable manuscripts and other written artefacts around the world, the Understanding Written Artefacts cluster of excellence at Universität Hamburg has developed a mobile laboratory. The first mobile unit has now been delivered. In the fall, it will be sent to India so that researchers there can study palm-leaf manuscripts that belong to the world's document heritage. It can be difficult to transport valuable and delicate written objects from abroad for the sake of scientific study in Hamburg. Their fragile condition as well as concerns about religious significance, unclarified property rights, and even civil war in the countries of origin can constitute impediments. "Not seldom do we find that there has been no thorough analysis of some unique object somewhere in the world, although it would be technically possible and it would allow the research community to take further steps towards understanding the development and purpose of written artefacts in manuscript cultures," explains Markus Fischer, spokesperson for the Artefact Profiling research group in the Understanding Written Artefacts cluster of excellence at Universität Hamburg. "So we decided that if manuscripts cannot come to the lab in Hamburg, we have to go to the manuscripts." The mobile laboratory fills the gap between the cluster's own mobile lab, which handles short-term jobs using smaller instruments, and its stationary laboratories.